


Streetlights Deliriously Flicker

by voleuse



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-11-21
Updated: 2007-11-21
Packaged: 2017-10-04 03:48:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voleuse/pseuds/voleuse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>The climaxes of suffering are complex, costly, beautiful, but secret.</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	Streetlights Deliriously Flicker

**Author's Note:**

> Set between 2.10 and 2.11. Title and summary adapted from Tony Hoagland's _Self-Improvement_.

Maybe it never would have happened, except Rodney was high on drugs and short on sleep and maybe he was going to die at any minute because Ford probably hadn't been crazy before, aside from a little too much enthusiasm with explosives, thank you very much, but certainly he was definitely crazy now.

Maybe it never would have happened, Rodney thought, unless everything else had, first.

Every time it started, all the cause and effect played through Rodney's brain, ifs and thens and in-betweens.

And he could let the litany run through the night, except Ronon was good with his hands.

_Really_ good.

Like, Rodney wouldn't have expected it, even from a weapons expert who had probably relied on manual dexterity for his survival in the past ten or so years.

And he could analyze that, would analyze that too, but it turned out Ronon was really good with his tongue, and that's when Rodney stops thinking very much at all.

After the fact, he admitted to himself that was the most disconcerting part of all. The not thinking, specifically.

Maybe he didn't mind it so much.

Not a lot, anyway.

*

 

It started on what Rodney believed was a Tuesday afternoon, because during his off-time he decided to rework the Atlantean calendar to account for the infinitesimal temporal shift he experienced every time he passed through a wormhole. Sure, they claimed everything was relative enough that the adapted standard calendar should have been able to account for space-time quirk, but Rodney had never been confident in the calculations of a committee in which he'd never been invited to participate. Besides, even geniuses such as himself had to take a break from scientific breakthroughs done on behalf of drug-crazed madmen, and basic astronomy and calendrical cycles had a soothing effect on him, half of the time.

Maybe it was a Wednesday.

In any case, he was in the makeshift lab that went beyond primitive and into just plain _wrong_, and when he looked up from his calculations, Ronon was leaning next to the door with a--and Rodney would admit this to anyone and defy them to react any differently--fairly intriguing smirk on his face.

"God!" Rodney said. "You're like a gigantic housecat."

Ronon raised his eyebrow. "What's that? A pet?"

"Yes." Rodney considered the idea for a second. "Probably a very dangerous one."

"Good." Ronon stretched, and Rodney was momentarily distracted even further from his calculations than he had intended.

He cleared his throat. "What are you doing in here, anyway? Shouldn't you be, I don't know, sparring with Teyla or something?"

"She went off somewhere with Sheppard a couple of hours ago." Ronon pushed off the wall and ambled over to the table. "What are you doing?"

"Fixing time." Rodney flicked his sheaf of calculations and scowled. He missed his three computers. Not that he had anything against writing things down on paper, but at least in a real lab he would have had real paper. What Ford gave him was closer to papyrus at best, bark at the worst. Ford either hadn't stolen any paper recently, or he thought Rodney doing advanced computations on bark was funny, and to be frank, Rodney could never decide which explanation made more sense. The calendar was a form of protest.

Ronon scanned the neat columns of numbers. "I don't really want to know, do I?"

"No. Well." Rodney shuffled through the papers and fixed them so, in case of interruption, his work on the Wraith ship was on top of the stack. "It's a side project."

Ronon reached over, flicked through the stack. "Will it get us out of here?"

"No." Rodney snatched the papers back and reordered them.

Ronon sighed.

"What?" Rodney settled back on his chair. "Are you bored?"

"I am." Ronon leaned forward, and that was when Rodney realized how very, very close Ronon was standing. "I was."

"You were," Rodney echoed. "What changed in the past thirty seconds?"

Ronon smirked, and it turned out what changed was Ronon's hand on Rodney's leg. Particularly, Rodney's thigh, sliding up and in and--

"Oh, God."

"This okay?" Ronon muttered, his attention probably diverted from enunciation.

"I--" Rodney gripped the edges of his chair and tried to will himself to staying completely still so that maybe this wouldn't end in an extremely embarrassing way. "Yeah, it's fine."

"Good," Ronon said, and he shifted his hand. Rodney stifled a groan of protest, barely, as Ronon unfastened and unzipped Rodney's trousers, easing them down, along with Rodney's boxers, just enough.

Rodney whimpered at the cool air against his skin, and Ronon chuckled. He wrapped his palm around Rodney's cock, and Rodney made a noise even more undignified, because Ronon's hand was rough--not a lot, but rougher than Rodney's hands had ever been. Ronon stroked him gently, slowly, until Rodney accustomed himself to the change, until Rodney was gripping the chair again, his hips bucking slightly as he contemplated whether asking Ronon to go faster would sound desperate.

Then Ronon stopped, and Rodney yelped, "Oh, come _on_!" He would have continued on, in a less polite way, but Ronon kneeled in front of him, and Rodney was temporarily stunned by how tall Ronon was, because even then he was almost eye-level with Rodney, and Rodney's never been overly fond of anyone who could loom, but Ronon's not so bad, really, once you get used to--

"Oh, God," Rodney moaned. Ronon's mouth was infinitely softer, hotter, than his hand, which Rodney had known intellectually, but he hadn't ever given thought to exactly _how much_ and even now he wasn't thinking about that. Instead, he was wondering if anyone would walk into the lab, because there wasn't any door, and would it be rude if he happened to grip Ronon's hair? Ronon couldn't blame him, could he?

And there came a point when Rodney didn't mind sounding so desperate, because his tongue traced over Rodney's cock exactly right, and maybe Rodney even begged, because at one point he decided dignity was overrated, and then he didn't care about very much at all, and possibly he forgot how to construct sentences.

Ronon swiped the back of his hand against his mouth, and if Rodney had started to reacquire the English language, that image derailed him completely.

When they kissed, Ronon's lips were softer than Rodney expected. He smiled, and he splayed his fingers against Ronon's thigh.

Ronon groaned.

*

 

Rodney had never thought himself to be a smug man, but in this case, he couldn't help himself.


End file.
